


Somewhere On Distant Shores

by Ivy_in_the_Garden



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Angst, Because someone had to write it, Family Drama, Family Feels, Gen, I cried while writing this, Post-Infinite but pre-Burial at Sea, THESE TWO NEED LOVE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-15 11:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5784202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivy_in_the_Garden/pseuds/Ivy_in_the_Garden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternative ending to Bioshock Infinite. Elizabeth decides to break the cycle of violence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not a Beginning

In the dusty corner, she watches. Little less than a spectre, little more than human. A million, million worlds fall through her fingers, like beads from a broken necklace, and yet this is the one she keeps returning to. The deep blue of her heavy velvet dress feels out of place amid the squalor grey of Booker DeWitt's office, the bare mattress and empty liquor bottles pain her—and enrage her.

(What's done is done. What's done will be done.)

He exits the nursery—if one can call a cradle and rug a nursery—and for a moment, he reminds her of Rapunzel's father. _Did he ever wander the kingdom from time to time, calling out for the daughter he sold?_ she wonders. _Or was he happier never knowing her?_  He seats himself at his worn desk, raking his hair with his hands, and she can see the fresh wound on his right hand: AD. Anna Dewitt. Absentmindedly, he plays with chamber of his revolver. Another wheel of blood spinning round and round.

"Booker," she whispers, and half regrets it, when the man leaps from his desk and points the revolver at her.  His eyes widen at the sight of her. The baby stirs slightly in her thin arms at the noise, and Elizabeth clasps her more tightly against her torn and filthy corset. 

"Who the hell are you?" His gaze falls to the slumbering baby. "What did you-how have you got my daughter?"

Elizabeth smiles wearily at his question. (Who was she indeed.) "...It doesn't matter who I am," she manages finally. "What matters is what you promise me next, Mr. DeWitt." The bird pendant glimmers in the thin light. 

"I'm sick of bargaining with you people. Give me the girl," he demands hoarsely, the barrel of the revolver pointed at her head. "Give me Anna. Give me Anna, and let me be done of this." 

Fear rises in her (can she be killed?), but anger quickly mutes it. How _dare_ he! How dare he threaten her for Anna, knowing full well that he sold her. "You _sold_  her," she spits back at him, all her composure lost. "And for what? A case of liquor and a clean account?" She's suddenly aware of the bruises on her face and chest, the opaque light in her eyes. She clasps Anna more tightly to her. "I came here to give you one last chance at redemption. One last chance for both of us."   

Shaking, Booker lowers his weapon. "Just give her back. Give her back to me." He can't take his weary gaze off the baby, and Elizabeth feels an angry tear fall down her face, unseen. The life she should have had, she is giving up to this Anna. So that one of them, at least, could know happiness. That thought doesn't spare her the intense jealousy that this one will escape the torture, the indoctrination, the bloodshed, the broken forms that she and Booker left behind them. The ceaseless ringing of the shotgun. The death cries and pleas.

And for a moment, the weight of her sins and his is as heavy as the ocean. The ocean she will die under. (Dies, died, will die.) The sounds of her footsteps as she approaches him are as measured as church bells announcing the hour. He never looks at her, only Anna's blissful infant face, until she moves to fulfill his request, and he catches her wrist. Something moves across his face when he finally looks into her eyes. Sees their identical hue to those of the infant he spent months lacklusterly tending.

"You're not...You can't be—? But how?"

She almost wants to tell him everything—almost—but thinks better of it. "The debt's repaid," she whispers, as she hands him the infant. "Anna washes you of all your sins." 

Watching him hold Anna tightly to his chest, half-formed promises on his lips, she notices that forgiveness feels less like flight and more like a favorite blanket. Her hand moves to her pendant, as she contemplates bequeathing it to Anna but decides against it. That Booker DeWitt belongs to her, and her alone.

That much, at least, is hers.


	2. Not an End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this was originally a one-shot, but Infinity's question about the life that Booker and Little Anna face inspired this addition. Please enjoy.

Quitting leaves him alternatively dizzy and nauseous, but he cannot lose Anna again. The bottles shatter in the rubbish bin as soon as the woman with the missing finger disappears, as if she had been made of light instead of flesh and blood. (The bottles cannot break quickly enough for him.) And in his haste, the pungent liquid spills onto him, adding one more stain to his clothes. 

Washing. He has to wash. 

He thinks of the woman Anna might have become, and grief and guilt overflows in his chest. Somehow, he did that to her, left her with that hollow, vacant look on her face that spoke of war and blood and trauma and everything he had tried to forget.  And she becomes another memory he tries to forget, as he rocks Anna to sleep; the feelings subside only when she closes those painfully blue eyes.

 He can do this, right? For Anna? Can all sins be forgiven?

 A man comes to his dilapidated office the next day, asking for a Booker Dewitt, that he had a job for him. Booker thinks it a cruel joke at first, that someone would want to hire a man too violent for the Pinkertons. The only reason he grudgingly gives is that a woman had shown up, a self-possessed woman who had recommended him for a shopkeeping job. Perhaps Booker's sister or a maiden aunt. 

When Booker is alone, he laughs and then he cries. This strange woman, this _other_ Anna, has thrown in her lot with him, for some reason he cannot understand. And who, then, will care for Anna, he wonders. 

A single name in a foreign hand answers his question. The name of a local schoolteacher.  Affixing the note to his desk is more money than he has seen outside a gambling den. Twice his salary with the Pinkertons.

It is difficult. On hard days, when his employer is short-tempered, he longs for the bottle, the boundless peace found only with the dimming of his mind. Sometimes, he purchases a bottle, opens it on his bare mattress, and remembers the screams he can't abandon. The rancid smell of fire as it consumes animal hides.   

Some days, the blood and terror is fresh, too fresh, and he just wants to forget it all. And why shouldn't he? He's already failed her once. Maybe a million times. Why should this be any different? He's not any different. He can almost see her, in that ragged velvet that bespoke of captivity and pain; the bruise on her scrawny chest where other women might pin a rose. She's just waiting for confirmation that he is just the same. Just another broken man, lost to the western front.  

 Anna cries again from the nursery. And in her wails, he hears only reproach—how could he think himself capable of caring for another with all he had done? Guns can't be beaten into ploughs. 

 "Anna," he calls out, setting the bottle with all its treacherous promises aside. He can't abandon her. Not again.

And near the cradle stands the woman again, Anna in her thin arms. Humming a lullaby he does not recognize. And fear whitens his world: she's come back, like a wronged faery. He's failed in the impossible task she has set, she saw him with the bottle, and now she has come to—

"Don't take her! Don't take the girl!"

 Desperation roughens his voice, as he frantically considers his options. Could he kill this woman made of stardust and terror? For Anna? He could break her neck, or bash in her skull with the fireplace poker or—

"A million, million worlds, and yet I keep returning here," she says quietly, as if she has not heard him. "Back where I started."

"Anna," he begins, but she shakes her head.

"I'm not your Anna." Anger laces her tone, before she softens again. She searches his face, as she returns the child to him. Again. "She is."

 Booker clutches his daughter again, relieved to hold her again. And then he notices that the woman has not come empty handed. In the crib is a beautiful blanket and a nursery book that won't be published for another thirty years.

"It's for her," the woman says, watching him. Waiting. Always waiting. 

He cracks open this gift, and Anna coos over the pictures, cocooned in her new blanket. He reads aloud this strange story about a group of animals living in a forest. A silly bear, a frighted piglet, a bossy rabbit, and so forth. Anna laughs and gurgles, pressing her chubby fingers to the page. It's hard work, to keep the pages undamaged by her wandering hands and to read along, but he manages it. His voice, however, trembles when he reaches the end ("How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."), but Anna pays him no heed. 

He then becomes acutely aware of her weight in his arms, this tiny being that needs him in a way that he has never been needed before. Who trusts him with a life he has already ruined. He wonders if she has entrusted him with Anna more than once. 

And when he glances to the doorway, the question on his tongue, the woman is gone again.

* * *

 The cradle has given way to a modest bed and desk. The rug, however, remains. And as Anna sings something in French quietly to herself, he surveys her recent drawing. Lifelike roses and passers-by and cats and birds and a structure he cannot identify—and a woman in blue with a missing finger.

"Can I have this one," he asks, pointing to the woman and trying to keep his voice level.

" _Why_?" Anna's at that questioning age now, when every action requires an explanation.

"I know her."

"So do I," she points out. "She's nice to me. Asks me if you treat me well." Anna smiles, picking up a pencil. Resuming her drawing of the view from her window. "She's my reflection. From the other side of the looking-glass," she continues matter-of-factly. "She wants to make sure I'm not lonely. She brought me a new book." 

In that moment, he knows that they will always find each other, he and this other Anna. Somehow they cannot be separated, and the thought both reassures and frightens him. And he smiles, because life has moved on, as it is liable to, from the blood and dust of the battlefield to this home and this child with a million, million stories. Because in the end, redemption came, not in a surge of glory and smoke, but a thousand, intertwined tasks.  

Because redemption was a constant. 

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I hope you enjoyed my take on an alternative ending to Bioshock Infinite. Let me know what you thought, okay? I value your feedback.


End file.
